Summing It Up
Summing It Up is an ITV schools TV series from the 1960s, covering Mathematics for primary school pupils.
Responding to the trend, firmly in place by the early 1960s, of teaching mathematics to junior children by practical experience and application rather than arithmetic drills, this series demonstrated basic mathematical ideas and also their real-world usage.
Summing It Up was partly recorded on location at two "go-ahead" London primary schools: the De Lucy Junior School and Eliot Bank Primary School[1]. Children were shown investigating things in the classroom, but as the series went on emphasis was increasingly placed on showing experiences which were out of reach of the everyday classroom, for example investigating Time and Distance in a British Rail Line Traffic Manager's Office, and reading gas and electricity meters. Teachers were encouraged to reproduce the more simple demonstrations - such as pendulum work - in the classroom after the programmes.
The series took a particular interest in the history of mathematics, to explain why counting and calculating have become so important to mankind, and to interest pupils in the development of standard measures. At the end of each term the programmes took a light-hearted turn, with a revision quiz just before Christmas 1961, and a look at puzzles and conundrums just before Easter.
In the series' second year, 1962-3, all of the original autumn term programmes were dropped, replaced by 10 new programmes interspersed throughout the year. The remaining 16 programmes from the first year were repeated, but in a different order.
This was just the second mathematics series on ITV (following 1957's World of Figures). It came to an end after two full school years on the air and was not immediately replaced. But in 1964 a new series called Primary Mathematics was introduced, for the same age group and also produced by ATV in Birmingham.
Episodes
| # | Title | Broadcast |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Why Maths? | 19 Sep 1961 |
| 2. | Recording Through History Part 1 | 26 Sep 1961 |
| 3. | Recording Through History Part 2 | 3 Oct 1961 |
| 4. | Numbers and Magnitude: The Ordinal Use of Numbers | 10 Oct 1961 |
| 5. | The Abacus | 17 Oct 1961 |
| 6. | Observing and Recording Part 1: The Weather | 24 Oct 1961 |
| 7. | How Long? How High? | 7 Nov 1961 |
| 8. | Observing and Recording Part 2: Time and Traffic | 14 Nov 1961 |
| 9. | Numbers and Magnitude: The Larger Numbers | 21 Nov 1961 |
| 10. | Quiz Day | 28 Nov 1961 |
| 11. | The Operation of Maths | 16 Jan 1962 |
| 12. | The History of Length Measurement | 23 Jan 1962 |
| 13. | The History of Weight Measurement | 30 Jan 1962 |
| 14. | Measurement and Scale | 6 Feb 1962 |
| 15. | Money: The Tuck Shop | 13 Feb 1962 |
| 16. | Money: The Bank | 20 Feb 1962 |
| 17. | Looking at Shape | 6 Mar 1962 |
| 18. | Experiment with Shape | 13 Mar 1962 |
| 19. | Observing and Recording Part 3: Volume and Displacement | 20 Mar 1962 |
| 20. | Fun with Numbers and Shape | 27 Mar 1962 |
| 21. | Reading Meters | 1 May 1962 |
| 22. | How Near? | 8 May 1962 |
| 23. | Pi | 15 May 1962 |
| 24. | Maps and Scales | 22 May 1962 |
| 25. | Time and Distance | 29 May 1962 |
| 26. | Time and Swing | 19 Jun 1962 |
| 27. | Have We Got Time? | 17 Sep 1962 |
| 28. | Numbers Around Us | 24 Sep 1962 |
| 29. | Special Investigations | 1 Oct 1962 |
| 30. | What is a Million? | 8 Oct 1962 |
| 31. | Symmetry | 19 Nov 1962 |
| 32. | Sizing It Up | 21 Jan 1963 |
| 33. | Probability | 4 Feb 1963 |
| 34. | Maths and Models | 25 Mar 1963 |
| 35. | Introducing Graphs | 6 May 1963 |
| 36. | Music and Maths | 17 Jun 1963 |
Credits
| Introduced by | Peter Lloyd |
| Commentary | Dick Graham (1961) Peter Cockburn (1962-1963) |
| Programme Adviser | John S. Flavell |
| Script by | Ian Kellie |
| Director | David Scott |
| Producer | Donald Carter |
| An ATV Network Production |
Resources
The series was accompanied by the standard ITV schools fare of a single booklet of notes for teachers. The booklets were 16 pages long in the spring and autumn terms, 12 pages long in the summer, printed in red and black, and including several black and white photographs showing maths investigations in progress.
The front cover design shows the words Summing It Up arranged on an abacus. It is possible that this was also the title design shown on screen, but I have not seen any episodes of this series so I'm not sure.
Sources & References
- A-R (1961) Associated-Rediffusion Programmes for Schools 1961/62. London: Associated-Rediffusion p.10
- A-R (1962) Associated-Rediffusion London Region Programmes for Schools 1962-1963. London: Associated-Rediffusion p.7
- ATV (1961) Summing It Up teacher's notes autumn 1961. Birmingham: Associated Television Ltd Education Dept.
- ATV (1962a) Summing It Up teacher's notes spring 1962. Birmingham: Associated Television Ltd Education Dept.
- ATV (1962b) Summing It Up teacher's notes summer 1962. Birmingham: Associated Television Ltd Education Dept.
- 'Independent Television and Education', advertisement appearing in The Times, 18th September 1961, p.9 col.A
- TV Times (1961) 'Schools: ITV Starts a Great New Term' in TV Times (Midland Edition) no. 307, 15th September 1961
- TV Times (London region) television listings, 1961-3 via TV Times Project database
- ↑ TV Times (1961) noted that the series was "recorded at two go-ahead London primary schools by an outside broadcast unit." The schools were named in the autumn and spring term teacher's notes, page 2 and 9 respectively.
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